Conversations With Afghan Teacher; Part 13

“.... You may have heard that most of the earliest human civilizations developed on the fertile soils around the rivers in warm climates where growing crops were easier?...”

“A rudimentary information about the earliest river-civilizations like those of Indus, Euphrates, Nile, and Huang-He  are part of “GENERAL KNOWLEDGE” (As per tradition, serious students read the general knowledge books that were available in the bookstores, and also consumed newspapers regularly in order to be able to compete in the civil-services-examinations, and “general knowledge” was a mandatory part of the examinations.)” I stressed on the word general knowledge to show that I wasn’t that ignorant. “And I also know that rice cultivating civilizations had denser populations than civilizations thrived on wheat and corn 1.” I boastingly added.

“I’m not testing your knowledge.” He smiled. “I just wanted to make sure that you are included in the conversation, so you don’t get bored…”

“No, no…. I’m enjoying the conversation… please carry on...” I was embarrassed. “Actually, I’m not a good conversationalist.” I tried to hide my embarrassment.

“What was your best conversation that you remember?” Asked the teacher unexpectedly.

“Although, I had enjoyed the knowledgeable conversations, but I had enjoyed more the tales of old men about places that I hadn’t visited or the time that I had spent with my friends conversing hours randomly and talking nonsensically…”

“The knowledgeable conversation is very small part of the conversations that interest men. We are creatures with unbounded imaginations that are at work all the times…”

The teacher paused, and we looked down, at the city. The opposite mountains were half bluish-grey and half yellowish-grey. Despite all of its problems, it was a beautiful valley, particularly during early mornings and evenings. Something that was to be felt than to be described.

“You was talking about the river-civilizations?” I broke the silence.

“Oh, Yes..” he fixed his glasses. “I was saying that Sumer was one of the most innovative earliest river-civilizations. They introduced writing, laws, canal irrigation system, wheel and the famous flood story of Noah also originated there.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“The intensive use of land soured the soil and resultantly, the crop production decreased drastically. Despite all those innovations, the Sumerian civilization couldn’t survive the decrease in the crop productions….”

“That makes sense.” I interjected. “We witnessed the collapse of Soviet Union as a result of poor economy, despite being one of the world leaders in the technological advances.”

“While that’s right but it isn’t a one way road. I will come to that as well. Right now, let’s talk about how means of production and control of the production system shape social structures to a large extent.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“You can see there are more orchards than crop fields in this valley and we both know the reasons. Orchards require less water and labor to maintain, and  can grow on poor soils in comparisons to the crops…”

“Balay Ustad.”

“In comparison, to river-civilizations that were based on irrigation and good soils, there were orchard-civilizations in places that faced water shortage and poor soil conditions like those of Mediterranean basin. Olive was the chief of fruit of those orchards. Olives were fine with poor soils, less water and required less labor to maintain and yet it provided a fruit that didn’t spoil till a year, provided oil that had many uses from cooking to lighting. And more important was the fact that once an olive orchard was established, it lived for almost a millennium producing fruits each year…”

“Very impressive.”

“On downside, although olive trees are evergreen and regenerate upon damages, it takes from five to twelve years and some even twenty years to produce olives. So, a damage to an olive orchard required about a decade to produce olives again…”

“That’s very long time..”

“As olive growing civilizations didn’t have crops to maintain their populations, they traded their olives with those of the crop producing civilizations. You may have heard the story of Prophet Joseph and his brothers?...”

“Right, right.” I replied. “Joseph was from Canaan that became a minister in the Pharaoh's’ court. And the Canaanites depended on imported wheat from Egypt..”

“Right. As olive producing civilizations had plenty of free times and needed peace for their trade and olive orchards, they introduced in depth concepts of ethics, justice and brotherhood through democratic institutions and Philosophical schools in the Greek islands, and Abrahamic institutions and schools in the Mediterranean basin. What we know of today's world are mostly based on ideas borrowed from those orchard institutions…

Continued…

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Footnote:

1. (Although rice has lower calories *130 to 216 per 100 grams depending on rice type* than wheat *339 calories per 100 grams*, but rice had greater yield than wheat per hectare * for instance before 1960, a hectare of rice could sustain 5.63 people and a hectare of wheat could sustain 3.67 people*. Rice producing regions like, South Asia and most of East Asian countries had dense populations and are still the most dense population centers. In comparison to the rice and wheat, corn has 86 calories per 100 grams and till around 1930 had similar yield per hectare as that of rice, however, since then, the corn yields have surpassed that of rice. Despite high yields, proto-civilization based on corn production like those of Mississipi river remained very small and short lived compared to other river-civilizations. Time and isolation *other river civilizations benefited from trades, sharing of ideas and technologies from each others* are few explanations offered.

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 12

That was obvious; “When even kids use dialogues and mediation to resolve their issues, then, societies, no matter, how primitive are definitely, better off than children…” I thought.   

“Like history of earth, you can understand the present situation of a people, if you know their past well…” the teacher added, before I could utter a response.

“Balay Ustad.”

“Have you heard about the famous experiment of the Japanese Scientist on Slime Mould?....” The teacher asked, “What was his name?” He closed his eyes and pressed his index finger against his temple. “The name is somewhere close... and….what was his name?...his name? Yes, yes, I remembered.” He smiled as he opened back his eyes. “Toshiyuki Nakagaki!”

“Toshiyuki Nakagaki” I laughed and repeated the name after the teacher. “Still, you remembers his name. That’s like mission impossible for me.”

“I’m a teacher and have to remember names!” He laughed again.

“No, I haven’t heard about that experiment.” I confessed. After few meetings, it had become easy for me to swallow my pride at times.

“Slime Moulds are basically unicellular organisms that usually live as single celled individuals and feed on other single celled organisms like bacteria. When some individuals sense the shortage of the food, they excrete a chemical signal and all the individuals combines and make a multi-cellular organism….” He put another slice of orange in his mouth. “And you can imagine that a multi-cellular organism has better chances in finding food and coping with food shortages..”

“That’s neat.” Said I.

The teacher laughed. “You know…” he shook his head. “Once, there was a time, when I thought there were huge differences between the intelligence of the different human groups…” he paused and looked at me to see my response. I was waiting for him to continue. “I’m not so sure anymore…” he smiled again.

“So why are there so much differences in prosperity levels of different groups out there?”       asked I.

“It all about the systems…”

“Isn’t the systems are made and maintained by the people?” Puzzled, I interjected.

“That’s true.” He replied with a somber nod. “But the slime moulds don’t have the kinds of intelligence we attribute to our brains.”

I didn’t get, what he meant by that, so I stayed silent.

“Nakagaki cut a slime mould into pieces and put on a different corners of a plastic maze in a petri-dish. The slime moulds grew throughout the maze and became a single mould again….”

“So they behaved  like the times, when there were food shortages?”

“Exactly.” He put another slice of orange in his mouth and gestured me to eat my orange too. “And yeah, don’t forget these oranges are packed with Vitamin C, something your body doesn’t store...”

I picked the second orange to peel. “Especially, when air pollution is on rise, we need regular replenishment of the Vitamin C.” I laughed.

“Nakagaki put two pieces of agar filled with nutrients on the two corners of the maze, and in a few hours, the mould body shrank itself to the shortest path of the maze between the two agar pieces…”

“So, in a way, it solved a puzzle, right?”

“Right.” Said the teacher while wiggling his legs up and down. “But it wasn’t a conscious act of solving puzzles as some of us do enjoy…”

I felt like he wasn’t feeling easy to jump into conclusions, so I tried to distract him by changing the topic. “Once, I was so into solving the word puzzles that, as soon as I received the newspapers, soon after reading the current Tarzan series, I would jump to the word puzzle section to solve it.”

“See, I can’t decide, whether the slime moulds that don’t have any brain are more intelligent than people who created social systems that at one end of them, people need advisers to manage their wealth, and at the other end, people scavenge for food in the garbage piles…” the teacher paused. His legs still wiggled up and down. “What do you think?” He asked me.

“In this case, I guess, there must be some strong connection between intelligence and inequality…” replied I. “It is just a guess.” I stressed.

“That’s very likely.” The teacher smiled. “And yes, you need your vitamins to maintain that intelligence.”

“Balay Ustad.” I ate a slice of the orange. “You said that humans learned very early that walls weren’t the best solutions to protect their heavy investments?” Asked I.

“Balay” Said Ustad. “You know, soil erosion and soil degradation isn’t a new problem. Early human settlements faced these problems after intensive agricultural activities and pasturing. (While teacher mentioned the soil erosion, I remembered that we were living in a part of the world, where desertification was the biggest challenge and I repeatedly heard about the warnings of upcoming environmental migration. Other than grey mountains, the lands appeared khaki. Close to the mountain fans, where underground water reservoirs were once tapped by force of gravity through karez systems, were replaced by forcefully withdrawing the water through tube-wells. Down in plain areas of the valley, the soils were already showing the signs of salinization. Some of the urban farmers used sewage water to irrigate their salad and vegetable farms. You could never told the vegetables or the salad that you are buying are either supplied by sewage- vegetable-farms, tube-well-vegetable-farms or supplied from other provinces such as Sindh and Punjab. Any casual visit to the two civil hospitals in the city, one  could see that patients with gastritis complaints were the routine visitors to the hospitals. The political and social impacts of the water scarcity were already becoming obvious. Those with political or social influences had more rights to the underground water than the ordinary citizen. So, it was kind of normal where populations of poor neighborhoods that numbered in hundreds of thousands people received none to few hours a week of water supply from the city sources and had to meet their water need by buying water tankers who supplied water at high prices, the influential individuals sold the water to water tankers or used the water to maintain their huge lawns, farms and orchards. It was common to hear the phrases such as land mafia and water-tanker mafia. Any way, from where we sat, I realized the scarcity of limited resources and worse than that an unstable and very poorly organized and maintained social structures living off those limited resources. It was true that there weren’t much room for manipulations when the resources were very limited. It was a real time bomb scenario.) ….

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 11

As I sat on roof of the underground-water-reservoir for the late afternoon tea, the main-gate of our house was knocked. (The roof of water reservoir was the coolest place in the house where we gathered to escape the heat of summer, drank green tea and talked till late in the night.) My younger brother answered the door.

“A spectacled man is asking for you.” He informed me.

In those days, the door knocked frequently. The boys were growing and so was the town.  Whenever, there was a vague description of the visitor, like a “spectacled man” instead of a name, it was understood the person is a new acquaintance. Just woken up from the siesta, I was sluggishly stood and went out to see the person.

“Salam Ustad.” I smiled to cover my laziness, tried to tidy my hair with my fingers and nervously shook my kameez  to make my appearance presentable, as I saw the “Afghan” teacher.  “Come in and join us for tea.”

“Salam” the teacher extended his arms and shook my hand. “Thank you for invitation. I hope I haven’t interrupted...”

“No, no.” I interrupted. “I am totally free.”

“I was on my way for a walk to bypass and thought to ask you, if would you like to join me?”

“Balay, balay Ustad. Let me wear my shoes.” (I wore slipper)

“Take your time.”

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“I am going for a walk with a friend and might come late.” I informed my mother and ran to the room to change.  (As I usually didn’t go out to spend time with friends, as it was the trend, and if I did, it was usually for a purpose, I got the permission without any further questioning).

“OK, make sure to return early.” All that my mother said.

And five minutes later, we were on our way towards bypass. We stopped by a fruit cart. Carts of vegetables and fruits were parked on both sides of the road. Elderly ladies inspected and bargained for the vegetables and fruits. Boys and girls hurried towards the coaching centers. The gap between the two generations were staged in the form of shopping for the dinner and going to the coaching centers, every late afternoon.

“Do you like oranges?” The teacher asked me.

“Since class third.”

“Since class third?”

“Yes, That’s when I first learned about scurvy disease and got obsessed to eat as many oranges as I could get.”

“I see.” The teacher smiled.

“I didn’t want to lose my teeth and hair….”

“That makes sense.” Said the teacher as he put the oranges into the pan of the weighing scale.

“And when I learned that smoking destroy the Vitamins, particularly Vitamin C in the body, I never touched cigarettes.” I boasted.

“Never smoked a cigarette?” He looked me into the eyes. “Not even out of curiosity?”

“Well.” I put an orange into weighing pan. “Just half a cigarette. It made me cough and worse, I couldn’t go home for hours fearing someone would smell cigarette. I didn’t want to get into trouble…”

“Which one was the stronger deterrence,  the fear of Vitamin C destruction or smell of cigarette?”

“Honestly, the smell of cigarette.?”

“It is my invitation and I am going to pay for the oranges.” The teacher stopped me when I tried to pay for the oranges. “You will pay for your invitations.” He continued.

“Agreed.”

Imagine a young man, whose total world experience was limited to a medium size city (I never liked large cities for living. Troubles in commuting and crowded apartments made feel uneasy. Till very recent, I thought, my preferences were weird in those respect, then, I met this young man and asked, if he had been to the New York city. “Binghamton is the largest city that I have been so far and the houses are too close that I don’t like.”, was his answer.), and he had witnessed a  town in  that city to grow from patches of orchards, randomly scattered houses and wilderness into a full size town. What he would talk mostly if he had met a new acquaintance?

We climbed a mound that was the highest point on the Western bypass. Down there, the city lied and smoked gasoline and diesel and puffed the smoke on the face of the surrounding mountains.  Close to us, few women sat around graves here  and recited fatiha, while their children played. Hazara Town graveyard had grown rapidly. For years, there were concerns that graveyard may fill up soon. All the efforts to acquire more land for the graveyard had failed so far. Every time, I saw the graveyard, the concerns for land shortage refreshed. There wasn’t much that I could do about it. Adjacent to the graveyard, there was a rough ground where boys played cricket (Years later, in 2011 terrorists attacked the boys and men who played cricket and soccer there). Next to the ground were walled orchards and vineyard. We sat on the mound facing the city. The shade of the Chiltan mountains advanced slowly as the sunlight retreated accordingly. The cool breeze of high and open area and the view of the city was surreal. The mound that we sat on was a recent Piedmont alluvial fan. For a while we sat silent and just gazed the city. Occasionally a fast truck disturbed the silence. I broke the silence and started talking about the history of plate tectonics that build the valley. All the way, I had talked about the growth of the town, the events that I thought were important and the fun that we had in those sans souci days of plays and fun, and now, I was imparting my newly gained knowledge of  introductory geology of the area. The teacher listened with occasional encouragements of single word, good.

“How old are those orchards?” The teacher asked me as he peeled an orange.

“I assume one and half a century based on the establishment of Quetta City by Britishers.” I replied after thinking awhile. “However, it is claimed that these orchards, the karez that irrigate them and the adjacent graveyard are five to six centuries old but as I don’t know of any research, the estimates and claims remain just so…” I added.

“As none of those trees including the mulberry and grape vines live more than a century, you might probably right.” He said. “Irrespective of the age of the orchards, I asked that question for a reason…” He added. Then, he paused and stared at the horizon, as if thinking about something.

I didn’t reply and waited for him to continue.

“Most of the times, we are so consumed by thinking out of the box that we forget what are in the box..”

“For example?” I interrupted.

“Like the orchards and the karez in front of us…” he put a slice of orange in his mouth. “It takes five to eight years for an apple tree to bear fruits. Just think the amount of the time and investments that go into an orchard to make it profitable. Now, compare the five to eight years to the five to twelve years that an olive tree take to mature and bear fruit….”

“We live on day to day basis, and I bet most of the families don’t have more than a week of supplies. Investing years without returns are really heavy investment…”

“Now think, if an orchard was attacked,  it would needed another five to eight years of peace for apple orchards and five to twelves years for olives to bear fruits. Although olives are evergreen and regenerate, they still need those lengthy years to mature…”

“Balay Ustad.”

“And the mud walls aren’t good protection for the orchards…” (Although the orchards were surrounded by mud walls, the mud walls weren’t maintained well and parts of it had collapsed.)

“No…” I laughed. “Kids and addicted guys trespass all the times.”

“Since ancient times, to protect their heavy investments, such as orchards and karez, the societies had developed social systems that avoided war and resolved the conflicts through dialogue and mediation…” he put another orange slice in his mouth.

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 10

“There are concepts that you are in love with and find they aren’t perfect, you find a way to live with that fact. Open-mindedness is one of them. Unless you don’t feel strongly about something, you don’t think hard enough to find new ways…”

“Isn’t open-mindedness about throwing out the old concepts and accepting the new ones?” I interrupted. 

“Well,” the teacher fixed the glasses over his nose. His cheeks had grown red. We had stood for long in the sun and had talked for long. “We like to hear and talk about things in abstract, like adaptation, new concepts and change as they make us look good and don’t require explanation. But our minds are structured by our likes and dislikes, and we are condemned with strong desires to bend everything to fit our likes and dislikes than to change ourselves…” 

“But you can’t ignore the facts that humans are curious about new things and also the overall progress force the changes even on the very conservative ones, too?” I interrupted him again.” 

“Recently, I had an interesting observation.” The teacher smiled as he leaned on his left side. “I was invited to a Quran-Khawani (A dinner memorial. Participants recite a chapter of Quran and pray for the deceased person, and dinner is served.) in a neighbor's house. A mix of different age groups were present. I was about halfway into my chapter and some of the participants had already finished their chapters that a young man turned on TV, muted the voice. There was a cricket match. The boys changed their position and moved close to TV and whispered. A group of old men who finished their chapters started talking local politics. During dinner, a conversation, largely with an argumentative-tone broke. The old men complained that the boys disrespected the Quran-Khawani by turning on TV and watching cricket. One of the boys replied, if it was Sang-girag game (a traditional Hazaragi game), the old men hadn’t considered it disrespectful. And that reply ignited a fierce debate on cons and pros of cricket vs sang-girag…”

“Which group you supported?” 

“I was sympathetic with both sides?” the teacher smiled and leaned on his right side.

“How come?”

“Each sides were genuinely defending their likes and expressing their dislikes, and as I was aware of their heart feelings, I was sympathetic with both sides.” he paused to see my reaction.

I hadn’t anything to add.

“Our likes are indoctrinated at very early age. Although, our likes are malleable, the rate of change depends on our levels of exposures and the ability to become comfortable in expressing those likes. As the old men weren’t familiar with the rules of games, terminology of games and players of the games, the lack of those knowledge was a challenge to their status quo. The boys on other hand considered sang-girag a game that had fallen from grace long ago, and they didn’t see any advantage in recognizing themselves with the game…”

“Do you mean, we are open to the changes that strengthen our status in society or raise our status and we oppose to the changes that challenge our current status?”

“If you observe your neighborhood and notice the recent changes, you will find most of the changes are strongly correlated with expressions of social statuses.”

English language centers mushroomed with dawn of the new millennium. Learning english language became a cultural norm and the language centers grew into centers of cultural activities. Yamaha’s 70 CC motorcycles morphed from a vehicle of convenience in the crowded and narrow streets to a vehicle of show-boys for whom the streets were in large, worked as performing stages. Suzuki’s carry vans called band-dabba (closed boxes) became another social phenomenon. Housewives got obsessed with concrete houses. Most of those adaptations were sorts of forced changes due to globalization (telecommunication and digital revolution), the arrival of international coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan and opening of new opportunities for the english speakers, migrations, narrow streets, politicization of public transport and denial of Hazaras for bus permits between their population enclaves of Hazara Town and Marri-Abad and lower costs of maintenance and protection, however, in a town that lacked public spaces for sublime expressions, houses, streets, and language centers worked as alternative platforms. 

Seeing me pondering, he added, “In the same Quran-Khawani, an elderly man compared the women of his generation and the girls of your generation. The old man complained that women of his time were happy with few pairs of clothes, and the girls of this age refuse to participate to any public event without a new dress for that particular occasion. I explained to the man that dresses and jewlries have become the expressions of social statuses. The old man disagreed. He interpreted it as moral downgrading of the society as general…”

“Let alone women, even children compare their dresses and throw a tantrum at home for the kinds of outfits like those of their friends and peers…”

“Right, right” the teacher laughed. “I face the protests of my children on regular basis. ‘It’s not fair.’ my eldest often son protests. ‘What’s not fair?’ When I ask him, he counts the new possession of his peers and ask, why he doesn’t own them. To him, justice is possessing the same stuffs or more than his peers.” the teacher laughed. 

“His concept of justice appeals to me, too.” I laughed. 

“When you enter a home, you see framed pictures on the display-shelf-walls. Those frames held either, the pictures of the loved ones, popular personalities (an expression of allegiance or ideological connection), great achievements (or celebrating the achievements), best moments of the lives, proud moments in history, something holy and something precious that express the identities, and social status.” added the teacher after a pause. 

“Balay Ustad.”

“Most of framed pictures belongs to the glorious pasts that people identify with.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“I heard that in Pohang University of Science and Technology of South Korea, the framed pictures of nobel prize winners are displayed on a wall. The last frame held the picture of a question mark as challenge to the students of the University.” the teacher looked at me with an obvious question mark on his face.

(The teacher mentioned about pictures of nobel laureates at POSTECH. I checked the POSTECH’s website to confirm it. I couldn’t find information about the wall with the pictures display. Instead, there are four busts of greatest physicists, Edison, Einstein, Maxwell, and Newton along two empty podiums for “Future Scientists of Korea (?)” and Nobel Garden, where Nobel laureates that visited POSTECH planted a tree in the garden.)

“That’s interesting idea, Ustad.” I could only utter those words.

“You are familiar with existentialism?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“I haven’t seen any framed question marks in any home or school or something like that. Have you?”

“No, Ustad.”

“We are photo-frame existentialist. Photo-frame-existentialist frame their passions, allegiances, possessions, potentials and dreams and all those things. Those displays are expressions of their status, or promotion of the statuses. And there are people who capitalize on their strong feelings and utilize them to frame their visions and challenges, and work passionately for them. Those are the futurists.”

“Balay Ustad.

“We usually call adaptations and welcoming of concepts, technologies and stuffs like that strengthen our social statuses as open-mindedness. That’s something common to all social groups, cultures and even animals. That’s not open-mindedness. To me, open-mindedness is your visions for your future and the levels of your open-mindedness depends on your visions. An open society constructs a culture that nourishes and shelters the niches of those futurists.”

“That’s really interesting.”

My young brother carried the thali of naans from tandoor (bakery). “Lalai (brother) Meal is ready.” said he.

“Ustad, please join us for a lunch.” I requested the teacher.

“Tashakor.” he put his right hand over his chest. “I have to go home. They must be worried about me, by now.”

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 9

He was right. On Thursday evenings, trucks brought home some of the miners who spent the whole week working in the coal-mines. The men unloaded their coal sacs from trucks (as part of their pay) and sometimes sold some of them. When the area linked to natural gas supply lines, the trucks, the coal-miners and the coal sacs became very rare, if at all. Once a river (Proto-indus River) flowed and drained into an ocean (Neo-Tethys Ocean) in this region. Plate Tectonics closed the ocean and changed the course of the river. Now, instead of the ocean, there is Katawaz Basin and instead of river, there is Sulaiman Mountain Chain. Indus river irrigates an estimated 45 million acres and supports an estimated population of 300 million people along its course. Textile and sugar industries of the area are dependent on the harvests of the lands irrigated by Indus river. While Sulaiman mountains are memorial headstones of the late Neo-Tethys Ocean, her sisters, Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and Black Sea are still breathing life. Other the coal-mines and natural gas, there is very limited agricultural activities, no industry and very sparse population (very limited business). And that’s not all the story. What the active microplates of the region have for the people of the area? We can only guess. In 1935, the Quetta city was destroyed in an earthquake and from time to time, the plates remind people of their existence. For now, Katawaz and Helmand Basins’ chief productions are terrorism and opium, but there is hope that sometime in near future, the potential oil and gas reserves of those basins reward the people with peace and prosperity (or possibly with further wars for those resources). 

“Whenever, I think about rationality, I immediately think of 2600 years long history of Buddhist teaching, 2400 years of familiarity with Greek rationale minds (Philosophers), 2000 years of Christian , 1400 years of Islamic schoolings and about five centuries since Renaissance, and still there are no agreements on very basic things associated with humans. On contrary, we do all agree on mainstream scientific findings. And I ask myself, why is so?” the teacher fixed his glasses. “I mentioned all those names just to remind you that humans weren’t short of well-structured-thinking-tools and those tools were available for at least two millennia….”

“Sorry to interrupt, I want to ask a question before I forget?” I interrupted.

“Lotfan (Please)” the teacher paused, extended his right arm with opened palm and face up. 

“When you mentioned the two millennia long availability of structured-thinking-tools…”

“Balay” the teacher nodded.

“...it struck me that the philosophies and sciences or what you call structured-thinking-tools improve by contributions of each generation, while each person has to learn them from start as no one inherits those tools by birth. And that means each coming generation has to spent more of their times to learn and specialize those improved tools….”

“I wanted to walk you there through familiar paths.” the teacher smiled. 

“You know, I have learnt the hard way that people do perform best in the areas they are more familiar with and if you change the circumstances, it significantly impact their performances. My aim, here is not to teach you something but answer your question of why I preach that it is time to rethink our culture and why I think the culture should focus on making people feel better about themselves…”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded.

“As you pointed out early,” he laughed, “people in each coming generation has to spend more time in learning. And as more better thinking-tools become available by each passing generation, I wanted to point out two things; one, When one learns something new, one is susceptible in making a lot of mistakes and two, the more sophisticated something is, the brain looks for more excuses to not learn it. And as you can figure out yourself, the learner is under triple pressures, to deal with embarrassments of mistakes, to constantly fight off the brains new excuses to stay on the track, and to be patient for longer time to get better off at things. The culture, we are currently practicing developed in times, when the lives were simple and the people had not to face these problems. Your generation is spending more time than ours and I expect the next generation will be under even more pressure…”

“You are right.” I couldn’t resist, not to jump in. “I constantly face the questions like,’ When I am going to finish my schooling and get started with real life from elders and I have difficulty explaining them why I am working and studying, and how studying is part of my work?”

“And those people think, if you aren’t making money full-time, you are missing something in your calculations, right?” he grinned. 

“Something like that.” I laughed.

“See, you have a perspective about continued work and study and there are some who disagree with you.It’s not just that the elders have difficulty agreeing with your perspective. They are just worried about you and want to be help you at the best of their knowledge. You can find plenty of people of your generation who have different life perspectives..”

“Balay Ustad.”

“That’s just an example of how humans don’t agree with each other. You are under pressure for something that the you parent’s generation had not to worry about.”

“By elders, I didn’t mean my parents, as neither of them asked me at any time to not pursue my dreams. Nonetheless, none of my parents went to school.” I explained.

“As your parents didn’t go to school, I guess, you had no home schooling?”

“No.”

“You children, like mine, might start learning at home even before their schooling age and you might teach them things that aren’t offered at school.”

“I think so.”

“You see, how the pressures and expectations sharply increase from one to another?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Unlike facts, mistakes are considered stupid things. By the way, have you heard that once a former US President named Reagan's famous misquote John Adam.”

“No.” I answered.

“‘Facts are stupid things.’ he said, instead of ‘Facts are stubborn things.’?” 

“That happens.” I smiled.

“The fact is, mistakes are considered stupid and in our culture, it is encouraged to keep score-boards of mistakes. To avoid mistakes, our brains prefer to walk on simple structured, designed or well-paved paths and that’s why cultures encourages conformity and we as consumers seek validation and whenever the circumstances change, we get scared and undergo intense pressure...” The teacher explained. 

“I got you.” I interrupted him, “In order to encourage learning new things and trying new things, you want the culture should go soft on conformity and mistakes, so the new generation do not feel over-pressured?”

A boy jumped out of a store converted to a carpet-weaving workplace, and ran down barefoot on the road. He held a carpet-weaver-latch. Two boys followed him. The smaller boys came out and stood next to the store to watch the race, and laughed. The two boys caught the escapee, put him on the ground. One of the boys side-headlocked the escapee and dragged him back towards the store, while the second boy kept kicking him in the butt. Passersby laughed.

“That was just a small demonstration of non-compliance.” the teacher shook his head. “That’s partially what I wanted to say.” He resumed the conversation. “In addition to that, I want to point two more things. At times, when people follow a particular trend, things are clearer and the pressures of mistakes are fewer but when people are confused, the pressures are doubled and an encouraging environment greatly reduces the concerns. Even more important than that is, that we live in a time, when creativity is gaining more importance, and creativity thrive in an environment where error and trial and nonconformity are considered normal things. I want to remind you again that our culture like most of cultures around world is evolved to favor classism. The existence of class is reality but there should be people to check it regularly so they don’t deface the people. If you remember, I asked you the first time, we met, if Eids make you feel better?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Unfortunately, our culture encourages us to keep a score-boards and race for higher scores that add to nothing. For example, if a young couple is marrying, both parties check other people’s scoreboards of spending, number of events and the exotic traditions and things they introduced and try their best to beat them, irrespective how much additional pressures those things might add to the new couple. The same thing is true about funerals, Eids, Ramadan, Muharram and other cultural things. That’s why, I call all those cultural activities as traditional-marketing-of-ego, not real culture….”

“Why culture is your prime focus instead of education system?” I thought that was a smart question to ask.

“I have come to conclusion that, very simple thing, such as, being open to positive criticism and to new possibilities play much larger role in making people more rational than just arranging classes of logic. There are vast variations in abilities of people to reason, still open-mindedness make people more inclined to go easy, when things they like conflict with reason. Again, let me repeat, people will not become open-minded just by preaching open-mindedness. People like to walk on familiar paths and as cultures provide a well-structured, very familiar paths or if you like very natural way that do not burden people with hard and dry thinking, the more open a culture becomes, the more people become open-minded...”

“Aren’t we already open-minded?” I interrupted again. 

Continued…

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 8

One of the ‘side-effects’ of talking to an older, more level-headed person is the loss of part of your enthusiasm. When the teacher reminded me that there was a super-creature called ‘reality’ who ruled ruthlessly over the world of actions, suddenly, like a ‘terrified cave-man’, I felt the presence of the invisible ‘super-creature’ everywhere. The super-creature tolerated thinking, imagining and believing whatever I wanted in the safety of my head but the moment, I expressed or put them into action, He took actions against the impractical ones. 

The teacher paused and narrowed his eyes.The wrinkles on the corners of his almond eyes and nose became more visible. Either he remembered something or struggled with some deep thoughts. I wanted to allow him some moments and looked around. Three teen boys sat on the front-step of the workshop adjacent to the flour store, whispered and giggled. It wasn’t appropriate to stand on the corner of street and talk like teen boys. But I didn’t want to invite him home, as I knew he would decline the offer and that would end our that day’s conversation. 

“What are you thinking about, Ustad?”

“Nothing important.” he fixed his glasses over his nose, something he did when he wanted to concentrate. “As you are a curious young man, I thought to share some of my observations…”

“Balay Ustad.”

“I don’t know if you have noticed an illusions that have become popular among our people….” I got alerted. I wanted to know, if I shared that illusion “...I met a number of people who recently adopted the surnames, like Changizi, Mongol, Ilkhani, Chughtai and like that. Choosing a name is a personal choice and I have no rights to object on that. What I want to point out is the mindset behind those names. They have developed this illusion that, unless a people don’t have a great history, they can’t become great people, or more precisely, unless, you don’t have a proud history, you can’t have a bright future. My problem with this mindset is that, it encourages to look at history the way we like it to be, instead it really was. You can’t force your liking on reality, instead, learn to like the reality. Titles, slogans, badges, etc only confuse our youths, nothing more. ”

“Balay Ustad.” I said in low voice. Actually, influenced by the trend, once I thought to adopt the surname Changizi but then after long conversations with my grand uncle, I abandoned the idea. My grand uncle had the similar views, that if you you weren’t cool with your situation and instead of earning pride, you wanted to borrow it, you were under strong influence of a delusion. 

“And I met people who believed unless, you get rid of your past and become from hair to toe, in and out, identical to a western person, you couldn’t be an enlightened person.They have this illusion that everything have already been worked out , and if we just follow the West, all our problems will be solved. Period. That’s exactly like the mindset of Salafists who believe, if Muslims implement the Islamic laws as they were practiced during Prophet and His caliphs, all their problems will be solved by themselves.The reality is that Science and Technology are common and work everywhere the same but when it comes to the human societies, each society has its own personality and has to go through its own developmental stages.If I expect all my students perform the same at my class because they get the same instructions, in the same environment, I will get disappointed by the results….”

In those days, I was an ultra-idealist person. I started thinking of a “possible” future utopian world that I called “elysium”. I thought, Science will continue to increase our understanding and technological advances will help us solve all the problems. There will no illness, no shortage of food, no psychological, social and economical problem and so on. Everyday I read news about new breakthroughs which solved this and that problem and they were all pointing to the possibility of the elysium. Besides, the pursuit of the Master degree gave me a sense of mastery of the world affairs and I had no doubt that my “prediction” will come true. Certainly, I will not be there to see the elysium but I could enjoy imagining it. Then, this teacher that I didn’t know anything about his educational background tore down my “elysium” by pointing the human element that was missing in my prediction. When the teacher said, each society has its own personality, I couldn’t help myself but to interrupt him, 

“Don’t you think, if people become increasingly rational, over time, they will come to similar conclusions and ultimately, they will become identical?” 

“What’s your field of study?” asked the teacher.

“Geology.” I replied.

“Good.” his face radiated with a warm smile “So you know the forces that drive the continental plates are the same all over the world, right?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded.

“But the history of Sulaiman mountain chains are different than the history of Ural mountains, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Okay, Genetic inheritance works the same all over the world, half of the chromosomes are inherited from mother and other half from father, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Then, why are we different from Indonesians, for example?”

“Our genes and Indonesians genes had different mutation histories.” Based on his previous arguments, I guessed the kind of answer he wanted to hear.

“Good.” he smiled and fixed his glasses again. “As genes carry information about our physical make-ups and determine the physical appearances and the diseases of next generations to a large extent, likewise, the cultures carry information about our ethics, values, fears, worldviews and things like that and they determine to a large extent the worldviews of the next generations. As different mutation histories result in different genetic makeups, similarly, different cultural mutations histories result in different cultural makeups….”

“But humans are rational animals and they can fix cultural practices that are stupid.” I interrupted.

“Of course, humans can change, and we both are exchanging views to recognize some of our stupidities.” he looked at his wrist watch.

“You must have some work or have to take your lunch or something?” he inquired.

“No, no, Ustad, I’m free afternoons.”

“OK, I very like to talk something about the relation of rationality to stupidity…”

Continued…. 

Part ; 7

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 7

He took a pause and looked at me. I guess, he wanted to make sure that I followed him. At least that was, how I felt. My feeling wasn’t baseless. It was a common habit of all the teachers that I encountered; when they had to explain something of importance, difficult or spoke for long, they paused and asked, if they were followed. 

“Interesting!” I replied.

We were close to our street. On the main road a large truck with all those showy decorations (my uncle called them shrines) blocked the road for vehicles. Only pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists could pass through the space between the truck and the wall. Two laborers unloaded the hundred kilograms sacs of flours off the truck on their backs. Usually, It took three of us (my father and two of his sons) to pull one of those flour sacks on a wheelbarrow from the store to home. The one who pulled the wheelbarrow definitely expected appreciation as if he had accomplished a difficult task. 

It was dismissal time of the schools (and the beginning of second shifts in some schools). The street was full of students. Some of the female students wore scarves, some dupatta, some shawls and some chadar. Male students dressed in traditional shalwar-kameez and some in pants and dress shirts. It was just another school day. Students walked in both directions, in groups, chattering and laughing. 

Our conversation hadn’t finished and I didn’t want to say goodbye to the teacher without knowing why he wanted a culture that helped people to feel better about themselves. We stopped at the street corner and continued our conversation.

“I highlighted some important historical events just to bring you where we both stand.” There wasn’t anything extra-ordinary about where we stood. Our town was a poor, neglected town in a poor, neglected province of a third world country that struggled with messy multi-level, local and regional conflicts. While even our houses hadn’t postal addresses, how could I believe that we were moving along the events of our time? I felt we were just following the trails that others had already walked. And our disagreements were on what trail take to reach a better place? 

“Have you noticed that most of the students wear dresses that are different from what their parents wear?

“That’s obvious. Parents aren’t expected to wear uniforms of their children?” I tried to crack a joke but the teacher didn’t laugh. That was a bad joke.

“Whenever I see all these different uniforms, they fill me with hope. Those uniforms represent different visions for the future. They remind me that the parents have many choices for education of their children and which school system will attract most students will depend on how their students will perform. It also shows the openness of our people….”

“But don’t you think that these variations may divide our people?” I interrupted.

“I understand your concern.” The teacher answered. “And you are not alone in that regard. Remember, I counted a number of recent failures just to illustrate that we live in uncertain times, and in uncertain times, it is not safe ‘to put all your eggs in one basket’. It is a tested prescription from ancient times, that the more diverse your assets are, the minimum is the risk of your losses. And our children our real assets. Aren’t they?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded. “I get your point about modern schools but what about religious institutions? Do you think, they still have usage in our time?”

He smiled. “Instead of yes or no answer, let me put your question in its context and then let you finalize the conclusion.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“ Have you heard this quote, “religion is the opium of masses”?”

“Yeah, I hear it frequently and I assume that it is a darling quote for some of my friends.” I laughed.

“Let me tell you this.” he adjusted his glasses. “Don’t think that I am a mullah or intend to replace mullahs....” and rubbed his “belly”. 

“I know that.” I interrupted to assure him that I believed him. In those times, it was a growing trend to look at religious people as stupids. To avoid the embarrassment of being considered as stupids, the learned individuals, either didn’t mention religion at all, or if they mentioned, they quickly clarified that they are not religious at all. Contrary to individuals who were filled with the air of intellect, the teacher didn’t exhibit any arrogance of understanding or intellect. He just behaved like a teacher, offered his shoulders for the curious ones to climb and see the other side of the walls, still, I wanted to assure him that I didn’t think of him as a “stupid” person.

“... Despite of my deepest desires to look at everything with pure reason, over time, I have learnt to distinguish between ideas that look reasonable and those that are actually practical. For example, in the months of Ramadan and Muharram, my friends remind me now and then, that ‘religion is the opium of masses’ and count all those money, time and skills wasted on those occasions that could otherwise go into building schools, hospitals, roads and other positive things. I do agree with them. One doesn’t need to be Socrates to agree with them. But then, I see the massive consumption of tea, coffee, cigarettes, snuffs, hookahs, opium, painkillers, hallucinogens, alcoholic beverages, and those are the list of things that I know. From time to time, I hear the names of new compounds that are even more potent, and like any other field, I can only expect for more dangerous stuffs…” he paused again to readjust his glasses. 

“Yes Ustad.” I nodded. Unlike our first conversation, this time, he was in mood of explaining things in detail and I wanted him to continue. 

“... And you know all those stuffs are consumed on such massive scales that an entire world of subcultures and dark economies have developed. In a realistic sense, that is the real “opium of masses...”.

“Yes Ustad.” I got his point. I wanted to ask if he was defending one “opium” against another but I let him finished his point. 

“....When I see the popularity of both religion and other stuffs as long back as I can track the history and across the cultures, I have no other choice but to conclude that, the masses need opium or even sometimes, I inclined to think, humans in general are addicted for need of some sort of addiction. You don’t allow them a “spiritual opium” or religions, they will turn to the “material opium”. 

“Ustad, In that sense, movies, songs and video-games (social media, esp, Facebook wasn’t that common in those days) are also opium of masses.”

“Oh, Yes. I forgot to mention them…” he laughed. “Again, my aim is not to favor one thing over another. I want to distinguish between practicality and reason.” 

“Balay (yes) Ustad. Balay Ustad.” I repeated to assure him that I followed him.

“You know, why I’m so obsessed with distinguishing between practicality and reasoning?”

“From your personal experience, I guess.” I threw a stone in the dark. 

“From witnessing the collapse of Soviet Union. For a large part of my youth, I believed the Soviet Union, with all her brilliant scientists, engineers, economists, social scientists, and public servants is the beacon of practical reasoning. But then, I witnessed her collapsing under the enormous weight of the plunders and scattering into daughter-states. Her daughter states are still struggling to come in terms with the realities of the wider world. I used to have a teacher who told us that engineers are the most logical people. If an engineer constructs a building of his liking and ignores reality, the reality will soon deconstruct his building into a lump of concrete, steel and glass. I don’t doubt that Soviets had the best engineers but they constructed a super-state of their liking ignoring the reality and as my teacher used to say, the reality deconstructed their darling super-state. Religious institutions have been part of our society for centuries and they are still standing and that indicate that they are still having some usage, otherwise, they were long deconstructed….”

“Ustad, but we also have seen the spread of hatred and destruction by the promotions of religious institutions?”

“That’s right. As I said, if you construct a building of your liking ignoring reality, the reality will deconstruct it. As you know better than me that, the States opposed Soviet Union worked as a together as a team for over two decades to turn the religious institutions from places of spiritual services to places of training and recruiting militants to counter the expansion of Soviet Union and the rival states. The ongoing war on terror is the biggest evidence that it was a very bad engineering, and the world has to pay the costs deconstruction and of fallout for a long time.” 2 

Continued…. 

Footnote,

2. Since, at the time of conversation, there was no sign of Arab Spring and the following Arab Winter, I have to add a footnote here. It seems, despite the earlier failures, there are some countries, for whom, turning religious institutions into factories of militancy are still more beneficial than the costs of resulting destruction. The benefits to costs ratio may be higher for now but as we have seen it in Pakistan, those rations will finally start to change, and they will have to pay the overdue costs of dealing with the destruction, the militants and the mindsets for a long time.

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 6

“Are you suggesting that human rights activists are modern saints?” I interrupted. 

When I asked a question, he nodded his head repeatedly , while maintaining a light smile. His humble gestures reduced the gapes of our ages and knowledge levels. 

“I am sure, you have heard the names of Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela?”

“I knew about the three others but Martin Luther King, I recently learnt about from a textbook on American Politics. I guess, very few people around here know him as I have never heard anyone speaking about him.”

“I know people around here consider Che Guevara a bigger saint than Mandela and some may even consider Gandhi as villain. “ he laughed. “For obvious reason. But I mentioned those four names as they are generally celebrated as some sort of saint across the globe. My point is though each of those personalities had different ideologies and struggled against different systems, they stood for equal rights and in an age, human rights were recognized globally, their struggles were considered noble and earned them special statuses…”1

“If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that in our time, human rights is virtue, not knowledge?”

“I am glad that you asked that question. Though the answer is very obvious, especially to a person like me who had suffered significantly from it....” I noticed the rush of blood in his face. “When I was at the same age as you are or probably a bit younger, I found myself torn apart between three systems of knowledge, each rejecting the validity of two others. The communists thought, they were the real representative of rationality and rejected libertarians as modern sophists who had narrow world-view that revolved around profits. Libertarians rejected communists as anti-intellectuals who wanted to punish talented individuals for their talents and spread stupidity. These two groups stressed that they are the real face of Science. And there were Mujahideen who stressed to bend all forms of knowledge to fit their Islamic worldview, as the words of God were the only true knowledge. The war of those three worldviews destroyed the world of our generation…” he took a long breath. “So you see, we are no more living in the world of Greeks, and like Greeks, we can’t propose, knowledge is virtue…”

“The Athenians punished Socrates to death, blaming him for misguiding the youths of Athens, and Taliban (students of madrassa) are killing people indiscriminately for what they consider misguided lifestyles.” I interrupted. 

“Unfortunately, that is true.”

I didn’t want to turn our conversation into talks about news (The news and talks about the news were taking over normal conversations. On TV, at homes, schools, stores, workplaces and roadsides, almost everywhere people talked news. I had developed “news-acid-reflux”. 

“I feel like, somehow, you believe, our culture should solace people. Am I right?”

“To a large extent, yes.”

“What made you to develop such tendencies?”

“May be I am a bit more inclined to link current trends to events that shaped them. I guess, that is how I was taught to see the world. Anyway, “amadam bar sari matlab” (farsi phrase: I returned to the point). In my opinion, soon after world war second, people were confused, distrusted traditional sources of identities and looked for alternatives. Philosophers, men and women of letters, artists and movie stars became very influential and the intellectuals gravitated towards introspection. People were open and readily accepted new ideas and were ready to experiment new things. The popularity of existentialism, deconstructionism, “skimmed-Buddhism” and hippie movements are few examples that demonstrated people’s changed moods. My understanding is that all of those movements failed to open up new ways and that’s why we see a trend of looking to Science for guide. The popularity of tech-products, sci-fi, star-wars and dystopia are the fallout of those failures. In East, people turned to the golden times in their relative histories and tried to reincarnate those golden societies. Islamism and nationalism spread throughout of the region and created the mess that we are currently “enjoying” their fruits in forms of the distrust, hatred and terrorist activities…”

Continued…..

Footnote 

At the time of conversation, I (and most probably the teacher) wasn’t familiar with the concept of social entrepreneurship and neo-Philanthropy. so I mention as footnote to this conversation. These are new trends that are creating new billionaire-saints. The tech-billionaires create investment organizations that invest in the startups or initiatives that have or supposedly to have vast social impacts. Although the moves are positive and they may some have good impacts (as they are able to pull vast resources and attract experts people), still institutional philanthropism will cost taxpayers more (as the significant tax savings of those institutions will have to be compensated by the taxes of lower income people, and as decision makers are few rich individuals instead of people's representatives, their benefits might be in places of particular choices.)